The fluidity with which Barot walks this difficult line between meaning and certainty makes these poems feel more born than made. This is a fantastic book.—Bob Hicok
Rick Barot, poetry editor for New England Review since fall 2014, has recently published a new book of poetry, Chord (Sarabande Books).
“Barot demonstrates his mastery of image throughout this collection of meditative, personal poems in which language is a boat that ‘cuts the water, like scissors/into fabric.’ At his best, Barot seamlessly weaves history, image, and etymology in ways that offer the reader new eyes to see language and the world it describes.” —Publishers Weekly
Barot has also published The Darker Fall (2002), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, and Want (2008), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and winner of the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, New Republic, Ploughshares, Tin House, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Threepenny Review, and more.
Chord is available from Sarabande Books and independent booksellers.
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Bayer tells a taut, gritty tale that gives a fresh and revealing insight into the Soviet Union of the Khrushchev years. —William Ryan, author of The Holy Thief, The Darkening Field, and The Twelfth Department.
Congratulations to Alexei Bayer on his new mystery novel, The Latchkey Murders, a prequel to the first novel in the series “Murder at the Dacha” (Russian Information Services, Inc). Bayer’s short stories have appeared in NER 19.4, 26.1, and 31.2.
From the publisher: “A serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow, rattling the foundations of the communist state (such anti-social crimes only occur in decadent bourgeois societies, after all). The victims are as pitifully innocent as the crimes are grievous . . .”
Bayer lives in New York and is a writer and translator in both English and Russian. His short fiction has been published in Kenyon Review, Chtenia, and New England Review.
The Latchkey Murders is available from Russian Life and independent booksellers.
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The collection demonstrates Beattie’s craftsmanship, precise language, and her knack for revealing psychological truths. —Publishers Weekly
New England Review contributor Ann Beattie has published a new collection of short stories, The State We’re In: Maine Stories (Scribner). Beattie’s fiction appeared in NER‘s very first issue (1978).
“The 15 loosely connected stories in Beattie’s latest collection, set on Maine’s southern coast, feature drifting adults and their rootless offspring at seemingly unimportant moments that are in fact critical.” —Publishers Weekly
Beattie has received the PEN/Malamud Award and the Rea Award for her stories, and has been included in John Updike’s The Best American Short Stories of the Century and four O. Henry Award collections. She is currently the Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.
The State We’re In is available from Powell’s Books and independent booksellers.
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For years Gregerson has been one of poetry’s mavens . . . whose poetics seek truth through the precise apprehension of the beautiful while never denying the importance of rationality —Chicago Tribune
New England Review is pleased to announce the publication of Linda Gregerson‘s new collection of poetry, Prodigal (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Many of Gregerson’s poems have appeared in NER, most recently “Theseus Forgetting” in 31.4.
From the publisher: “Prodigal [ranges] broadly in subject from class in America to our world’s ravaged environment to the wonders of parenthood to the intersection of science and art to the passion of the Roman gods, and beyond . . . A brilliant stylist, known for her formal experiments as well as her perfected lines, Gregerson is a poet of great vision. Here, the growth of her art and the breadth of her interests offer a snapshot of a major poet’s intellect in the midst of her career.”
Linda Gregerson is the author of Waterborne, The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep, and Fire in the Conservatory. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry as well as in New England Review, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Ploughshares, Yale Review, TriQuarterly, and other publications. Among her many awards and honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, four Pushcart Prizes, and a Kingsley Tufts Award.
Prodigal is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and from independent booksellers.
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Binding together and moving through this delectable collection there’s a mystery, the one that makes you keep turning the pages . . . —Kathryn Davis, author of Duplex
Emily Mitchell has published her new collection of stories, Viral (W. W. Norton).
From the publisher: “The characters in these stories find that the world they thought they knew has shifted and changed, become bizarre and disorienting, and, occasionally, miraculous. Told with absurdist humor and sweet sadness, Viral is about being lost in places that are supposed to feel like home.”
Mitchell’s stories have appeared in many magazines, including Harper’s and Ploughshares. Three of the stories from this collection first appeared in NER: “Lucille’s House” (28.2), “On Friendship” (31.3), and “Three Marriages” (34.2). She teaches at the University of Maryland.
Viral is available from Powell’s Books and independent booksellers.
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